Bye bye snow!

After experiencing a very very white Christmas, I have now witnessed a very, very sad event: the melt-off in record speed! The weather suddenly warmed up, and the sun broke through the clouds. This made the snow melt so quickly that our deck and fence began to steam!

This is what we saw outside during lunch! That morning the snow had still been more than a foot deep out there!

This isn't the greatest picture, but you can see the steam rising from our fence...

...and just so that nobody starts to complain about boring garden and fence pictures (because truly the back yard isn't much to look at yet)... here are some pictures of ME! In this case, feeding myself breakfast ALL BY MYSELF.

My new train set is SOOOO much fun to play with! My Momma and/or Dad still have to help me set it up... but once it is set up, I play with it for hours and hours!

Watch out train! There are wild dinosaurs afoot! But don't be too worried, they are "friendly" dinosaurs. They cough up and give back any pieces of you they eat a little later.

One thing I CAN do all by myself is line the straight train-tracks and a "bumper" up back to back to make what I call a "truck." You know, one of those long long, car-carrying trucks? Mighty impressive, those massive vehicles....

Oh. And my Momma found this one on the camera, left over from Christmas.

"Mommaaaaaa! I'm naked!!!!!!!!!" - as told by my Momma

Saturday night Ben and I had already gone to bed, when close to midnight, I heard a little voice from the room next door. Muffled by multiple walls and the door, I couldn't understand what Mark was saying, but the fact that he was saying anything at midnight made me decide to go check on him. I went into his room, and was welcomed with the somewhat drowsy announcement: "Momma! I'm all naked! Help!" Not quite sure what to expect, and still clumsy with sleep, I felt my way over to Mark's bed. Reaching for him, I found a fuzzy head, and a bare shoulder. Uh Oh. Followed by bare back. Not wanting to feel any further surprises, I asked Mark, "Mark, did you take your nighty off???" and was answered (with a bit of pride in his voice), "Yep! I'm all naked!"

You see, up until last week we kept Mark in the dark about the fact that he can indeed take his own clothes off. Now that Mark is an underpants-man, he can take off his own pants and underpants to go potty. He can unzip his nighty, and wiggle out of it. He still wears a diaper during the night (not during his nap though), and he now knows how to take it off so he can go potty.

After putting Mark's nighty back on and tucking him in, I went back to bed. Ben had the brilliant thought to ask whether his diaper was on - I couldn't remember, so Ben checked. All was well, and we went back to sleep.

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Due to the white cold stuff that fell profusely from the sky, we unfortunately had none of the planned Christmas visitors... this made us very sad...instead we got to spend lots of quality time together "just the 3 of us"


We still had a very special time together on Christmas Eve. We ate a delicious dinner.


We read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible (Matthew 1 and 2; Luke 2). The candlelight church service was cancelled because of all the snow.


We prayed together to thank the Lord for sending his son...


...as a baby....


...into this world...


... to be our Light and our Savior. My Momma and Dad explained to me that THIS is the reason we celebrate Christmas, that it is Jesus' Birthday party.

After I went to bed, my Momma and Dad relaxed together, and then went to bed. We all slept in until about 9am this morning!


Dad made us a wonderful breakfast this morning. Here a picture Dad took of my Momma and me after breakfast.


And here is a picture my Dad took of my Momma and himself.


It's hard to get a picture of all three of us when there is nobody else to take the picture... we had fun unpacking the gifts we gave each other!


... here my Dad is helping me assemble my little wooden bike!


It has no peddles. That is so I will learn to balance and push myself with my feet, first. Germans don't "do" training wheels anymore. They learn with this kind of bike, and then transition to a "real" bike.

My Momma really loves the gift Dad gave her - it's a very cleverly made coupon-book, with coupons for everything ranging from free footrubs, "I told you so"s, a nice dinner date together, a weekend away, my Dad doing laundry, dishes, putting me to bed, and more such things. Of course each coupon has a photo and a witty comment. Very creative, and it will be fun for my Momma to use those coupons!


My Momma gave my Dad a flat self-heating griddle for making breakfast on, and drew and framed this picture of me for Dad. He was really happy about his gifts, too.

I am going to go play with my new wooden train-set, and read my new books, and play with the cool Rescue Heroe station and helicopter I got from my cousin! Thank you for all the good "loot" - and please don't forget what Christmas is about: It is about celebrating the birth of Jesus, it is about spending time with family. Presents are nice, but they are NOT the focus of Christmas!

SNOW SNOW SNOW!

And that is in capital letters now. Although we are still far from anything remotely resembling a 'blizzard,' we have still had A LOT of snow these last few days, especially considering that we are in mild Vancouver, WA. By Monday we had a foot of snow. My Dad had to shovel and chip the car out in order to go to work. My Momma and I spent the morning shovelling the rest of the snow out of the driveway and the walkway to our front door. I had FUN flopping into the deep snow, and playing with the big pieces of ice that were part of the snow layer.


Tuesday my Momma decided to shovel the snow off of the deck out back (more than 700 square feet), and then used that snow to build Holden and me a slide that went down the stairs from the deck, and then down the hill. We had A LOT of fun sliding down, squeaking and screetching and screaming all the while! We played outside until our cheeks and noses were bright bright red. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of us on the slide. Maybe my Momma or Dad will take some on Friday.


We had about 3 more inches of snow last night. Unfortunately, because of the snow and storm in the Cascades and the East side of the state, my Gramma and Grampa Griffing and Aunt Kirsti and Uncle Brian couldn't come here as planned... we are hoping they might be able to come tomorrow, but also want them to stay safe!

Flop! This is fun! The snow is deep enough that if you flop into it, you don't touch the ground!

The snow has a layer of ice in between. It was fun to lug the pieces around, to lick and nibble them, and to make snow sharks (see next picture)

After throwing some ice into the snow, I decided that it looked like a shark fin. So I took several more pieces and put them into the snow. Here are two of my snow sharks. Watch out, Momma, they might try to nibble you!

Here is the back deck on Sunday... about 8 more inches snowed onto it on Sunday night, plus three more last night.

Here is the front of our house on Monday. Today you can barely even see the tips of the ornate grasses sticking out of the snow. My Momma or Dad din't bother to clear the driveway today... we will see if it snows again tonight.

In further news, we have successfully had day #2 of wearing big-boy-underpants ALL DAY, including during nap time! No accidents, and I have proven that I can go potty all by myself, including pulling my pants down, and back up. I still call my Momma or Dad for help wiping. I am not sure what exactly defined the event, but my Momma announced on Monday afternoon that "from now on" the Bradley household has the rule that every Mark has to wear big-boy underpants all day.

Snow snow snow!

It has been uncharacteristically snowy here in Vancouver this last week. A few Vancouverites have been throwing the term "blizzard" out there... which my Momma and Dad both think is pretty silly, especially considering that A) the snow is only 2 inches deep, and that's in the deepest un-melted patches, and B) you can see to the end of our street, 3 blocks down, without having to strain your eyes. The Germans have a good term for what the snow really is doing: "rieseln" - which means it is gently floating down from the sky.

Anyway, today my Momma didn't have to watch any other kids, and since she is done making and wrapping Christmas presents, we decided to have some fun together! We both put on our snow-pants, boots, coat, hat, and mittens, and spent several hours outside in the snow!



First we walked to the little wilderness at the end of our street. There, we built a snowman. His name is "Moe." He isn't very big, again, our "blizzard" brought maybe two inches of snow... in the deep patches. I helped my Momma roll the snowballs for his body. He has eyebrows, and stick arms and a nose that I found all by myself.

My Momma tried to show me how to make a snow angel, but my comment was: "The snow is too bumpy! Let's go walking more!"

So we did. We walked and we walked through the muddy little forest, until we came to a dead end with brambles and big rocks. I decided it would be fun to climb on the rocks. So I did. And here I am at the top.

Ok, this was fun! Time to go back inside. My nose is getting "coldy cold!"

Short excerpt from our morning (by my Momma)

Mark shut the kitty into the bathroom, kitty is meowing wildly, while scratching the door.
Me: "Mark! Open the door and let the poor kitty out of the bathroom!"
Mark: "Oh, he's ok, Momma! Jesus will watch out for him and protect him! He not need be scared!"

Christmas Crafts!

Hello everyone, and happy almost-Christmas! My Momma and I have been busy doing fun crafts-projects, and we decided to share them with you. My Dad likes to tease my Momma when she sees something and comments "I could make that myself, I'm not going to PAY for one of those!" Reality is that most planned crafts-projects never are even started... but here are a few that have been completed! Oh yes, and for those of you who are disinterested in crafts, there are a few pictures of me at the end of the blog.


Exhibit A: The advent table decoration. For those of you who don't know, Advent is the time spent in anticipation of the birth of Jesus. One candle is lit for each of the 4 Sundays preceeding Christmas. Anyway, my Momma and I always take an empty bag with us when we walk to the playground, and have accumulated a fine collection of various sizes of pine cones, as well as sweetgum-tree balls (I call them "pokies"), and beech-nuts. We took a glass plate, placed the candles in the middle, added some artificial red berries (total of 80cents at the craft store), and put an assortment of pine cones around the candles. Voila! Hint: buy red candles AFTER Christmas for the next year... you can get them SUPER cheap that way.

Exhibit B: the pine-cone wreath. You can purchase a wreath frame at a craft store for about $2, or you can make one using a metal coat hanger. We opted for the pre-made frame. Using floral wire, my Momma attached the cones, sweetgum balls and beech nuts to the frame. Make sure the cones are tightly packed, you can fill any gaps with smaller cones after the fact. It took about 2 hours, and got her hands very very sticky with sap, but the results are rather nice, don't you think? The little elf is another home-made project of past years, a family tradition. If we get around to making elves this year, we will post a few pictures.

Exhibit C: The tree-topper angel. This was actually a project of two Christmasses ago. My Dad's family always had an angel tree-topper, and my Momma didn't realize that it was of importance until it was too late to go buy one. So she made one, instead. The "interior" of the angel is a toilet-paper roll (the cardboard part). Pipe-cleaner arms were mounted onto this. The head is made from cotton balls stuffed into a flesh-colored stocking. The hair was then sewn on (again, cotton balls), the clothes are made from pieces of a white cotton sheet, with some lace stitched on and a cord belt. The gold was painted on, as was the face. Wings are just gold ribbon, reinforced with a little bit of wire. The top of the tree goes inside the toilet paper roll, under the "dress". Not the most handsome or elegant angel, but we've grown rather fond of him, and so he gets to stay.

Here is our Christmas tree! You can't see the lights because our camera insisted on flashing. But it looks sooooooo nice I am having a really hard time NOT touching all those fascinating ornaments. So far I've been a good boy... but I do need frequent reminders to look with my eyes, not my fingers.

Exhibit D: Surely you are wondering what a fish net has to do with Christmas crafts? WELL, our tree came packed into this net! Since my bedroom has an "ocean" theme, my Momma cut the net apart carefully, and then we made a craft project out of cutting out and coloring fish for it! A few thumb tacks, and strategically placed knots later, and my ceiling is inhabited by fish in dire need of rescue.

SO. That is all for crafts for now. My Momma is busy with some other projects, but since they are mostly Christmas presents, you won't get to see them before Christmas... Here I am playing with legos at my Grandma and Grampa's house in Spokane. Look at their nice new bamboo floors!

Here I am playing fireman next to the tree. Using this hat, I can either be a "man" - bill forward, or a "fireman" - bill back. A "man" drives his bobby-car to "work" and back, and protects his stuffed animals, real kitty, and Momma from pretend monsters by fighting them off with a sword. A "fireman" rescues imaginary people and pets out of buildings, using helicopters and toy fire-engines (the size of his palm) - all accompanied by loud comments of "Oh no! FIRE! Weeee-ooouuuuu-weeee!"

Here I am snuggling on the lamb-fur rug... it is sooooo nice and soft... even NICER than the NICE rug in my bathroom!